What goes into making smaller, faster, and more efficient smart phones and other electronic and research devices? Chris Ober's lab has some answers.
Referring to the electronics industry, "They chose the EUV [extreme ultraviolet] wavelength as their next target goal in part because the smaller wavelength makes smaller features, but the revolution in wavelength requires a revolution in materials."
The Ober lab collaborated with Emmanuel Giannelis to invent the world's fastest EUV photoresist, which leads to making extremely tiny structures—peaking the interest of the electronics industry.
As director of the Cornell Nanoscale Facility, Ober reflects, "We have the best facility in the country for nanoscale research. All the basic semiconductor processing tools we need are here."
In addition to new materials, the Ober lab studies research topics, such as novel techniques for biological research and how to prevent the fouling of boat hulls.
If you've ever seen the inside of a smart phone or a piece of wearable tech like an Apple Watch, you may have been amazed at the tiny size of the semiconductor chips that power the device. They aren't small enough, though, for the electronics industry. The industry seeks to produce components at ever decreasing size in an effort to increase speed and efficiency, and at the same time, lower power consumption and weight. Working with materials at the microscopic level, Christopher K. Ober, Materials Science and Engineering and his lab may have the answer. They produce an array of thin films and surfaces that have the potential to revolutionize the world of electronics. In addition, the Ober lab creates innovative surface materials for other industries, such as the biomedical and even the shipbuilding industries.
Recently, Ober joined with department colleague Emmanuel P. Giannelis to invent the world's most sensitive (fastest) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photoresist. A photoresist is a coating used in photolithography to map out a pattern on a surface—say, of a silicon chip. The chip is coated with the photoresist and exposed to a light shone through a mask. The photoresist's solubility changes where the light strikes. A solvent then removes the more soluble sections, before the silicon chip is subjected to a subsequent process, such as etching or dopant diffusion, which transforms the silicon wherever the photoresist is absent, creating patterns on the chip.
For the past 20 years, the electronics industry used various tricks to fabricate ever smaller structures using ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 193 nanometers, but they are finally stumped.
The traditional solution has been to poison the sea creatures by loading toxic copper metal into the paint used on ships' hulls. The paint is designed to wear away, constantly exposing fresh copper, and the copper ends up accumulating in the ocean. Ober is part of a multidisciplinary international team funded by the United States Navy seeking to solve the problem through surface engineering. "It's incredibly hard because, given all the years of evolution, there's always something that will stick to your surface," Ober says.